What we teach our kids about money today will have a huge impact on their future.

Did your parents teach you about money? Did they teach you how to balance a checkbook, or how to budget?

I don’t remember my mom spending time teaching me how to save, budget, or manage my money but I do recall my mom saying things like “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

In the past, I have had an up and down relationship with money due to the beliefs I adopted from my mom who was a single mom working full time raising myself and my two sisters. I am very grateful for the sacrifices my mom made to provide a stable home filled with love and acceptance. I firmly believe If I learned about money at a young age I might have made better decisions on how I invested and spent my money.

I was taught from a young age that I would need to work hard to earn money and when I did have it I must be careful or I might lose it. I was also taught that the only way to earn a good wage was to graduate high school, go to college, learn a trade, work for a company for forty years, and then you can retire with a pension.

Some men my age their parents taught them how to save and invest as soon as they were able to understand it and they are financially well off today. Other people, I know their parents established a checking or savings account in their name at the age of thirteen and taught hem how to manage their money.

I don’t blame my mom for not taking the time to teach me about money because she was only teaching me what her parents taught her. It is imperative today we learn how to improve our financial knowledge, our beliefs, and habits of how we view money so we can instill in our kids’ positive beliefs to create a bright financial future as adults.

I am taking a course called The Money Magic Course and it was by doing the exercises in the course I discovered many false beliefs I had about money. It was such a powerful revelation that I could clearly see how those beliefs I picked up as a child affected me the past 5o years. One of the most powerful tools that changed how I viewed money and my relationship was a book called Overcoming Unearning by Barbara Stanny. 

It’s not too late to retrain yourself and reprogram your beliefs about money and create a prosperous future for yourself and your children.

If you want to set your children up for financial success teach them about money as early as possible. I heard about a man last week whose grandmother taught him about buying stocks at 7 years old. His grandmother took him to McDonald’s to get a snack. It was there she taught him what each job in the restaurant entailed worked starting with the workers, the manager, and the owner. She then told her grandson that she would give him a dollar if he would approach the manager and ask him if McDonald’s was a publically traded company. Her grandson approached the manager and asked “excuse me sir is McDonald’s a publicly-traded company?. The manager replied “Yes McDonald’s is a publicly-traded company. He soon left the restaurant with his grandmother and then went home and she bought him some shares of McDonald’s stock.

As a man now he started teaching his sons about investing and how to pick good stocks during this crisis and one of his boys replied toilet paper would be a good stock to buy and he asked his son why do think that is a good buy? His son replied because all the toilet paper is disappearing from the grocery store shelves.

It is never too young to teach our children about saving and spending their money wisely. If your child struggles with completing his chores you may want to offer to pay him a quarter for each chore he completes each week and when it comes time to spend his money show him how to comparison shop to allow him t get the best value for his money.

Another opportunity to teach your child is to take them grocery shopping with you, give them a calculator, have them track how much your bill will be when its time to check out and have them count the change the clerk gives you.

Be as creative as you like because the more they know about money now will help them to respect and manage it wisely when they are adults.

Five ways to change how you relate to money and earn it 

1. The first way to gain control of your money is to create a budget for your household and track your income and expenses. You can find some free budgeting tools at DaveRamse.com How to make a monthly budget.
2. Stop or avoid borrowing money using credit cards or financing appliances or furniture purchases. It is better to save money and pay cash.
3. If you find yourself consistently overspending if you mostly use your debit card you can use an envelope system and pay cash. You can learn about using an envelope system by going here
4. Meet with your spouse and your kids and set some financial goals individually and as a family. 4 ways to reach your financial goals
5. Make time to envision your financial goals as if you already achieved them. Learn how envisioning your goals can help you achieve them faster.

I would love to get your feedback if you applied any of these tips if you would share your results with us.